Sadly, no. I haven’t come out with a ghost story (yet!). But I did write about somebody who could still be hauntin some recording studios in Nebraska-Johnny Cash!
So I was approached by a publishing house out in Boston (allegedly), to write an autobiography on a folk American icon. They had me choose between three and the only one I knew about was Mr. Cash. My dad is kind of like an Indian Clint Eastwood in that he loves folk/blue collar Americana, as well as Clint Eastwood. For this reason, I was introduced to Johnny Cash before Ravi Shankar. I remember sitting in my dad’s white toyota tacoma and listening to “Ring of Fire” and seeing my dad bop his head; something he’d never done with Indian music. It was a special moment, something I’ll never forget because it gave us this point of connection. Every time I heard that song or any from Cash I would go tell my dad right away and he’d play it in the car for us if it was on. When I told him I was writing a book about Cash his eyebrows raised in approval and astonishment. He’ll probably never read it, and if he did he might get bored, but I’m happy he knows we both share this love of a dead white man that sang the lord’s ballads.
I enjoyed writing this. It felt like I was getting ready for battle. They gave me a month and three hundred bucks. I took to google docs and laid out my plan. I read a few of his oldest biographys, some new ones, and then his own. It was such an interesting dive into what a life could hold. This man really was such a champion of people and to his own detriment. There were details and vignettes that I couldn’t include because it would be redundant or errant for a biography but I still think of them occasionally. The story of Glen Sherley comes to mind.
Glen Sherley was a prisoner at Folsom, Sacramento. Before that he was at Chino, Soledad, and San Quentin. One time, Sherley broke out of prison but was caught and sent back (question: does that count as recividism?). He was a youth offender, afer having left the Oklahoma dust bowl plague he came west and got himself into robbing and thiefing to keep his meals steady. Eventually, he messed up enough to get sent to state prison at Folsom. There, he would write about his life and woes of being imprisoned.
Cash had played Folsom before, but had never been given a song on tape by one of the prisoners. A preacher friend of Cash gave him the tape and told him one of the prisoners wrote a song about the “Greystone Chapel.” The lyrics spoke about his soul being free though his body is imprisoned. The song touched Cash in such a way that he decided to stay another night and performed it the next day. He also made the “terrible, terrible” mistake of pointing him out among the crowd.
Now, for kids today, this might sound like a dream come true; to Sherley it certaintly seemed that way at first. An American Music Legend is pulling you out of your rock bottom with his hands outstretched. I mean that’s just something out of a fairytale. So he gets called out, Cash tells him he wants more, and Sherley’s life changes forever.
He had a new purpose. Talk of a musician from prison was circulating and Sherley found people inside that helped keep his spirits going after the change of pace. He was even asked to do an entire album from prison by Mega Records. It was all going well and Sherley’s audience was growing. Upon his release from prison, Sherley was greeted at the gates by none other than his savior, Cash. The years following tested Sherley’s comfort, it seemed rehabilitation wasn’t part of his recording contract.
Cash often mused about Sherley’s position. I sense Cash felt pieces of himself resembeled Sherley and as much as he wanted salvation for believing himself to be the uninentional catalyst for his brother’s death, a man can only do so much for another.
It wasn’t long before Sherley’s criminality would become a problem in the band. He struggled with stardom and the responsibility attached to it. After Cash dismissed him from the band so that he could recuperate, Sherley decided to quit music altogether. He began working at a cattle feeding company and lived in the cab of a semi-truck. Falling deeper into the hole he created, Sherley’s drinking habit became undoing. He eventually found drugs and it turned his nightmares into a reality. He got so high one night he shot a man. He fled after the incident and called his daughter telling her that he was not going back to jail. A few days later he was found dead with a bullet through his skull.
Cash payed for the funeral, but truly, Cash payed for this the rest of his life. Even in his memoirs Cash writes about the regret he holds in how he handled Sherley. It’s with a passionate zeal that Cash ruminates upon this. The dream he held for Sherley was too big and Cash felt as if he picked the man up out of the gutter and placed him on charcoal. I guess that’s fame.
The story of Glen Sherley is not one that’s too commonly talked about when Cash is brought up. Most have no clue about him. But, I think it’s important to remember alongside the folk legend as it shows us what the industry really is; a business. Cut throat and fickle. Sherley resides as a story of a man caught in the fury and madness of country music’s torrent.
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